In The Bhava Poem

THE BLIND POET The standard account of Sur 's life is the one recorded in the Caurasi Vaisnavan ki Varta, ' 'Conversations with Eighty-four Vaisnava, ' ' a work whose original compilation is attributed to Gokulnath. The commentary that almost always accompanies it comes from the hand of Hariray, a man customarily assigned an impressive lifespan extending from A.D. 1590 to 1715. The Varta is a sectarian work, for Gokulnath and Hariray were important figures in the lineage of the sixteenth-century theologian Vallabhacarya, who is revered as the founder of the rich and influential Vallabha Sampraday, a devotional community whose membership extends west from Braj across Rajasthan and all the way to Gujarat and Maharashtra, on the shores

Nor are the historical records of Sur 's time very helpful.

MAJOR THEMES IN SUR 'S POETRY Sur has been praised most highly for his minute, clever, sometimes almost fawning descriptions of the infant Krishna. These compositions are said to make him the exemplary poet of vatsalya bhava, the tender, all-giving emotion that parents and especially mothers feel toward their children, a feeling that is epitomized by the attitude of a cow towards her calf. The ' 'cows ' ' involved here are usually the gopis, the milkmaids of Braj, through whose experience Sur speaks; occassionally one can hear him speaking for him more directly, too. Sur 's poems are more about Krishna 's amorous adventures. These are traditionally grouped under the heading madhurya bhava and are poems having to do with the sweet, literally ' 'honeyed ' ' emotions that lovers feel. Here again Sur projects himself into the persona of a gopi lost in love for Krishna. These poems are attractive love poems in their own right, but they are at the same time piercing expressions of the painful emotions